Wednesday 22 March 2023

Background

The Church as the body of Christ is the image St Paul uses in the text for today. Being given a drink from the same cup of the Spirit adds a sacramental feel to this passage. These two references, to the body and to the cup, are clear links to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Paul is highlighting the sacramental symbols by which we become one with Christ and one with each other (while remaining of course individuals): "The body is a unity, though it is made up of many parts" (1 Corinthians 12:12). ‘Whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." (v.13)

This unity in diversity is also expressed in narrative, in story. I am thinking of Pentecost and the descending of the Spirit over the nascent Church with signs of tongues of fire over the people's heads and tongues of diverse languages coming out of their mouths. People of diverse backgrounds were able to hear the message in their own language.

The Church of Christ is born by the power of the Holy Spirit as an intercultural and multilingual body. The gospel is at its best when proclaimed in a second language. No-one should say that we don’t need the other or dismiss another for being a stranger, as it were dismissing someone for being just a ‘little finger’ while they are important as ‘an eye’. The gifts of the Spirit are bestowed to build up the body. The body is only fully operational when it has all its parts. The body is even more complete when its most humble parts are given honour and dignity: the poor, the suffering ones, the disregarded. A body composed by the stranger and the despised would be more genuinely the body of Christ. The Church, is more like the body of Christ when it is caring, in unity, exhibiting the signs of the suffering of its Lord, with pierced hands and feet from its time on the cross.

To Ponder:

• After receiving Holy Communion, in the moments of quietness before the prayer after Communion, how to you continue receiving Christ in your spirit?
• During Holy Communion, what role would noticing and praying for those still receiving the sacrament have in building the body of Christ?
• How to return to your gifts in union with Christ? Would opening the pages of a hymnbook at the Holy Communion section and meditating on a hymn help?

Prayer

Let’s pray with Charles Wesley: "O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise".